Packing for Ron Paul: GOP Convention-bound Reardon Speaks
The yawning excitement of the 2008 Republican National Convention. by Random Outlier
(libertarian)
Friday, August 29, 2008
(My buddy Rearon wanted to do a bloggy little column on my Nolan Chart account. I always say yes to guys better armed than I am. --RO)
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Protective coloration. It's all in the old American Tourister luggage. Pinstripes, wingtips, and buttondowns.
The four-day Pachydermia Pageant is just a couple of days off and only a few hundred miles away from home where the usual camo is by Wrangler and Lee via my Irish tailor, Goodwin O'Will.
And I expect you to thank me, if for no other reason that for 96 long hours I'll be rubbing elbows and whatever with the corseted blue-haired maidens of my erstwhile party. As an aging Republitarian with a residual strain of lechery, I simply accept that there isn't that much Viagra.
Celibacy is over-rated, but I willingly sublimate for the cause. My loss is Ron Paul's gain, and come hell or high water he'll get an unexpected vote. God knows what it will cost me in compensatory favors to my delegation.
Screw it. It's worth it.
When Obama wins I will be on the official record as an official opponent of the goddamdest statist stupidity and socialist teddybearism in American history to date.
When McCain wins I will be on the official record as an official opponent of the goddamdest statist stupidity and socialist teddybearism in American history to date.
It's a better feeling than buying one of those stupid "Don't blame me I voted for..." bumper stickers. A little more likely to earn an IRS audit, maybe, but I'm a poor man. If they take my house, what the hell. Let them worry about fixing the roof. Bernanke will loan them the money.
Speaking of the poverty of the lonely libertarian, I have lived frugally these past few weeks to set aside a couple-three hundred bucks for the Ron Paul counter-convention over at the Target Center, and I will spend it on whatever is being peddled to state the liberty message clearly and concisely.
(If I smell a Libertarian party shill, the cash goes back in the Ruger P89 fund. A guy can get disgusted with a playskool party after thirty years of contributing and, for his money, getting ballot-access drives and Bob Barr -- period, full stop.)
I read that the Ron Paul party attendance is guaranteed to be in excess of 500 souls and may hit closer to 20,000. I figure the latter figure comes from the Troofers who decided to take a break from proving 911 was a Cheney plot. I could be wrong and hope I am. Maybe the all-star lineup of bands-that-grownups-never-heard-of will pull 'em in.
But I do look forward to a little time with the Ron Paul people. Sure, some of them can appear a little spacy, but with a core conviction embracing H.L. Mencken's political commentary the worst of them is preferable to most of the mill-run delegates over on the other side of town. Come to think of it, I've met more than a few spacy professional Republicans.
I'm not obligated to stay through the final orgasm back at the big convention hall, but I might. I like balloons.
Or I might not. I can leave before the Thursday prime-time McCain speech, pick up a pack of balloons at Family Dollar, and get an early start on the only convention postlude a sane man could want.
St. Paul is roughly the same latitude as the Three Forks country of western Montana where the noted libertarian Jim Bridger disputed the ownership of beaver plew with the libertarian Blackfeet. It's a couple of days west with the home of a loved one right on the way, a place where I can stash the Brooks Brothers and Florsheims. (Maybe forever. I don't intend to do this again.)
That requires a little packing, too, and the back of the van already has -- suitably concealed from prying Republican eyes -- duffle with sleeping bag, Smith and Wesson 59 for eventualities unpleasant, an ancient .22 RST4 for fun, the aforesaid Wrangler garb, and a cook kit.
The objective is to forget all this crap for a while, then, when my psyche settles down, beside a little stream I know flowing into the Madison River, to build hatfull of fire, sip from a tumbler of Tullamore Dew, and begin thinking hard about the next four years.
We never had a chance to elect Ron Paul, and we never will. But maybe our libertarian leaders added a smidgeon to their understanding of practical politics. (They were wizards at raising money for Ron, naifs -- at best -- in spending it.)
Maybe the libertarian commando raid of '08 will lead to to a Normandy breakout.
Not in '12, of course, but, well, let's say before one of Obama's kids wins the White House with Chelsea as running mate.
I still envision one of my great-grandchildren earning a summer internship with the CATO Institute in Washington and standing awed in the moonlight before the new Liberty Monument:
Carved granite, Barry Goldwater shaking hands with Ron Paul.
Paid for by public conscription and massively over-funded by the citizens of a republic grateful for the power of an idea, morally beholden to the two great losers who, in the end, prevailed from their graves as the political fathers of rational governent -- the liberty message.
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do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
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